Navigate UI with Dpad from Xbox controller on Mac?

Question

So, according to some documentation I found, the Xbox controller on Mac does not return Dpad presses as vertical/horizontal axes:

As you can see, the Dpad is only recognized as buttons 5, 6, 7, and 8, and not as horizontal/vertical axes. For my character's movement, I just created code that returns 1 or -1 for axis depending on the button pressed. It works perfectly fine. But then I found another problem: UI navigation.

I can't navigate my menus with the Dpad on Mac because the the EventSystem is expecting navigation via horizontal/vertical axes, which the Dpad is not providing.

Is there any way I can turn these Dpad button presses into real horizontal/vertical axes in Unity's Input system? Or is there something else I can do to make UI navigation happen on a Mac, with the Dpad?

Answer 1

Nowadays/since MacOS 11 use GCBoxGamepad

example:

#import <GameController/GCController.h>
#import <GameController/GCExtendedGamepad.h>
#import <GameController/GCXboxGamepad.h>
#import <GameController/GCControllerButtonInput.h>
#import <GameController/GCControllerDirectionPad.h>
#import <GameController/GCControllerAxisInput.h>

- (void) checkController {
  int n = (int)GCController.controllers.count;
  
  if( n ) {
    // there's a controller. poll input.
    GCController *controller = GCController.controllers[ 0 ];
    
    //info( "Class type %s", control.extendedGamepad.className.UTF8String );
    if( [controller.extendedGamepad isKindOfClass:[GCXboxGamepad class]] ) {
      //info( "It's an xbox controller" );
      GCXboxGamepad *xboxController = (GCXboxGamepad*)controller.extendedGamepad;
      
      if( xboxController.buttonA.pressed ) {
        info( "you pushed A!" );
      }
      if( xboxController.buttonB.pressed ) {
        info( "you pushed B!" );
      }
      if( xboxController.buttonX.pressed ) {
        info( "you pushed X!" );
      }
      if( xboxController.buttonY.pressed ) {
        info( "you pushed Y!" );
      }
      
      
      if( float x = xboxController.leftThumbstick.xAxis.value ) {
        info( "xAxis %f", x );
      }
      
    }
  }
}

```